


Forged in Fire

by shealynn88



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Domestic Moments, Enemies to Lovers, Episode: s15e08 Our Father Who Aren't In Heaven, Hand Job, M/M, Masturbation, Self-Flagellation, Sex, brief canon typical torture (Sam), the physical hitting kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:48:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22024366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shealynn88/pseuds/shealynn88
Summary: Adam is locked in his own mind, with Michael wandering through whenever he feels like.  It's a long, lonely existence.“I want you to be happy here.  I’ve tried to create something good for you, but still, you are lonely and restless andloudand I’ve got other things to do!”“Well don’tbother, then!”
Relationships: Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 24
Kudos: 163





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I am indebted to my amazing beta, [interstitial](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstitial). A diety among humans, truly. Any remaining issues are all me.

Adam wakes up and he’s burning - skin and muscle - pain he’d never known was possible. Just a few seconds is enough to make him wish for death. 

“Shhh,” he hears, a calm sound that slides between the screaming. It sounds like his mother’s voice. “Shh, Adam. Go back to sleep.”

He feels increasingly heavy, and then he falls.

* * *

“I was supposed to see my mother,” Adam spits angrily. “That was the _deal_!”

“And _I_ was _supposed to win a war and **bring my Father to Glory!**_ ” Michael’s voice is raw and terrible, a roll of thunder that makes Adam’s ears ring in the aftermath. “It didn’t exactly go to plan,” Michael says quietly, “and we both have the Winchesters to blame for that.”

Adam laughs. “You think I _care_ about them? You think I care about _you_? Your stupid war? The Winchesters may be assholes, but they were right about one thing - you guys are _dicks_. You went back on your word and now we’re both stuck. Am I ever gonna see my mom again?” He crosses his arms over his chest and forces down the lump in his throat. He will not let this thing see him cry.

Michael huffs dismissively. After a few moments, “I may never see my Father.”

Adam looks over to see Michael’s face - his own face - twisted in something like regret, sadness, helplessness. _Fuck him_ , he thinks. But he imagines his face looks more or less the same.

* * *

“How long has it been?”

Michael shrugs. “A while. Time means little here. Your brother’s body was pulled up and saved.” He looks at Adam with a cruel smirk. “Not you, though. In case you weren’t sure where you fell with your brothers.”

“They’re not my brothers,” Adam argues, ignoring the pit in his stomach. “I’d have left them here if I could’ve.”

“You’ll appreciate this, then.” Suddenly Adam has his body back, and the scene is much simpler than the copy of his house where he’s been since he said ‘yes’.

The cage is dark, just one long hallway of bars that stinks of burning flesh. There’s panting and begging and then _screaming_. Oh, God, the screaming. 

“What the fuck?” he mutters. The sound is chilling - heads straight to his gut, straight to the part of his brain that tells him to _run_. 

But there’s nowhere to go.

Slowly, he begins to put together what he’s seeing. In front of him, the source of the sounds and someone standing with their back to him. The figure is moving - pulling, ripping motions as thick arms bulge with effort and then jerk abruptly to the side. Wet sounds and crying, and long brown hair, and a face turns toward him briefly, and it’s Sam’s face, and he’s whining and now blood is bubbling on his lips and he’s choking and Adam never liked him, but _this_ …

He turns abruptly and vomits bile, and then dry heaves endlessly as Sam’s screams turn to gurgles and then silence.

“I should have added ‘no puking in the cage’ to our little agreement, brother,” the man says, turning toward Adam. “Oh, Michael’s letting you drive, huh? That’s sweet. You wanna come say hello to your big bro?” There’s blood spattered over his face, his hands are red to the elbow and his smile is small but _terrifying_.

Adam swallows and shakes his head, _no_.

The smile drops. “Well, I’d like to say hello to mine, then.” He gestures with a finger and Adam feels a series of snaps inside him, like all his ribs are being crushed into his lungs at once, and then he’s blessedly _gone_.

* * *

Sometimes entire _days_ go by where he feels normal, almost. In an apocalyptic, there’s-no-one-else-anywhere-and-he-can’t-leave-his-house kind of way. But his routine is pretty basic. He plays video games and watches TV (it’s always showing exactly what he wants to see) and reads his old comics or his new textbooks when he’s feeling adventurous. 

But his dreams are always horrible. Sleep seemed like a good way to while away the time, this existence that seems endless in it’s ubiquity. But it’s a horror show. He jolts awake and then lies back down, and as soon as he closes his eyes, there they are again. Sometimes it’s Sam, sometimes his mother, sometimes it’s him, feeling the sharp sting and burn of ghoul teeth before all the pain comes together into something overwhelming and it all fades to nothing before it starts again.

He’s sitting up in bed, covered in sweat and shivering when he hears the front door open and someone calls, “Adam!” His mother’s voice. _His mother’s voice._

The tears are immediate, unconscious. He’s up and running down the stairs and they’re hugging each other so hard, he can barely think. “Mom,” he breathes, voice catching in his throat.

“Darling, are you okay?” she asks, smoothing his hair just like she always has.

Something drops in his stomach.

The last time she did that was right before...right before she tore into him, laughing, jeering, right before she (not her, not really) and her brother ripped him apart slowly, making him _feel_ it for as long as they could.

And this isn’t her, either. He knows better.

He pushes her back. “Don’t,” he chokes. “Don’t pretend.”

Her form shimmers and she grows a few inches. Michael at least has the grace to look uncomfortable. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“You can’t…” _Fuck_. He still can’t speak. “You can’t be her. I don’t want to be fooled anymore, okay? Just, be you. Or, you know, me.” He gestures at the body they share. “At least then I know it’s not...real.”

“I thought it would bring you comfort,” Michael says, head tilted slightly.

Adam shakes his head. “I know I’m only human, but man...I know who’s here, and lying about it doesn’t change that, okay?”

“I don’t understand you.” Michael sounds annoyed.

“Really, my little pea brain?” He wonders if Michael will ever catch the anger in his words.

“I want you to be happy here. I’ve tried to create something good for you, but still, you are lonely and restless and _loud_ and I’ve got other things to do!”

“Well don’t _bother_ , then!”

Michael watches him with such intensity that Adam half expects to start burning away, X-men style. 

He doesn’t.

Michael leaves the way he came, and the door closes softly behind him.

Adam kicks it in frustration before heading back upstairs.

* * *

He’s just doing every day things, the boring, mind numbing things he does to while away the time and he hates it, he hates how meaningless it all is. And then suddenly everything is gone and he’s _burning_ again, hot and sudden and then all-consuming, like he’s suddenly been thrust into the coals of a bonfire, like his skin is burning off and every nerve is on fire. He screams and screams and prays for it to end.

And then it does.

“Adam? Adam!”

The voice is deep and demanding and when he hears whimpering it takes him a few minutes to realize it’s him. 

“Why?” he whispers. It’s so much worse than anything he could have imagined. They could have told him he’d burn alive and it still wouldn’t match the experience of it, the maddening pain that strips everything away. “Why are you _doing_ this?”

“I…” It’s the first time Michael’s seemed at all uncertain. “I didn’t mean to. Lucifer was...distracting. I didn’t realize I wasn’t shielding you until you started screaming.”

“Oh, Christ,” Adam says, and tears well up. “That was an _accident_?”

“Yes,” Michael says softly. He touches Adam’s forehead and Adam flinches away. “I...sometimes it’s hard to keep my essence from you. It’s too much power for you to experience without pain. I didn’t intend for it to happen.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Adam whimpers. _Fuck, fuck, fuck_. “Bet that was in the fine print, huh?”

“I don’t want you to suffer.”

“You took my _body_ ,” Adam protests. But even as he says it, it’s clear that it could be so much worse. He could be burning all the time. He could be Sam.

“You agreed. You knew the sacrifice was worth it.”

“It was worth seeing my mom again,” Adam reminds him. 

“Understand, your sacrifice was meant to save the _world_. One life, against that?”

“ _My_ life. That I never even got to live. Christ, man. I was nineteen!”

“Yes. You were a child, and already you’d lived a quarter of your natural lifespan. Do you understand?” Michael’s face is compassionate and kind as he explains just how insignificant Adam is. “When compared to the survival of your species, is that significant?”

“So, basically, I’m a bug. Great. You have a lot of conversations with the bugs you squash?”

Michael ignores his sarcasm. Adam isn’t even sure he hears it. 

“No,” Michael says. “I speak with the humans God has messages for. I give warnings. I rain down fire and vengeance. I don’t have...conversations.”

“So, why are you talking to me?”

MIchael shrugs. “We’re all stuck here together. I can’t fix that, Adam. But I can try to make it pleasant for you. I can keep you inside, here, where it’s safe.”

“Where _you’re_ safe,” Adam scoffed. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? You need a body?”

Michael shrugs again. “I don’t. Not here. Lucifer has created a container for himself and I could do the same. But I’m not sure what would happen to you. If you were still trapped here, he would likely take his rage out on you, too.”

Adam shivers. “Like...like with Sam. Why…” He swallows, afraid of the answer. “Why does it matter? If he does that to me?”

Michael’s face goes hard. “You don’t deserve that. You did what was asked of you. Sam...Sam betrayed us, Adam. He failed in his role and he _trapped_ us.”

“Trying to save the world.”

“ _No_. Trying to stop God’s Plan. That is blasphemy, Adam, and blasphemy is punished.”

“Jesus,” Adam mutters, and then looks up in fear. _Blasphemy_. 

But Michael doesn’t seem to notice. “I wish you could understand. You are small, but this war, this Plan, my Father’s chosen creation - this is _important_. I am on your side. I was fighting for _you. All_ of you.”

“It’s not the same. A _species_ isn’t the same as a _person_ ,” Adam says.

“You are small,” Michael repeats, and he looks so _sorry_ as he says it, as if Adam is a beloved pet. Beloved and desperately stupid.

Adam throws up his hands and bites back his fury.

* * *

“What would you be doing now, back in the world?” Michael asks, leaning back in the recliner and rocking softly.

“I’d be, what? Thirty by now?”

Michael shrugs. “Sure.”

“I’d be married, right? That’s what I’d always figured. Married with some rugrats and a dog. Maybe a labrador.” He laughs. “Jesus, I had a steady girlfriend for like, three seconds!”

“Is that...a problem?”

“Yeah. No. I mean, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Whatever I got - well, that's all I’m ever gonna get. At least I got laid,” he quips, and it feels wrong in his mouth. Because, yeah, that was fun, but it was always supposed to lead to something bigger, more permanent, and now he’s dead and stuck and alone.

Michael shakes his head. “Humans are strange.”

“Hey, man. We’re whatever your precious dad made us. Can’t really argue that, can you?” He’s heard the _‘I was dad’s favorite before the atoms you’re made of were created’_ speech a few hundred times already, and it’s usually before Michael shoves him down for a while and he wakes up decades later. 

“So tell me about it,” Michael says instead. “What do you imagine it would have been?”

Adam laughs. “Really? Well, you’ve been here since the beginning of time. Maybe you should tell _me_ about it. I didn’t exactly have a great relationship model growing up, you know?”

Michael shrugs. “I never paid much attention to mating habits.”

Just like that, Adam is reminded that they're not friends. He snickers. “Right. Mating habits. What am I, now? Your pet? Better learn care and feeding, buddy.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “You need none of those things with me. I sustain you with my presence.”

“Right. The present of your presence. Lucky me.”

* * *

“You probably miss him, huh?” Adam knows it’s a bad idea to start a conversation, but it’s not exactly exciting to sit in the living room with the angel. Again. It’s been...decades? At least? On earth, he’d probably be dead of old age. 

“Who’s that?”

“Your Father? The guy you literally never stop talking about.”

Michael gives him a crooked smile, almost like he gets the joke. “I’m used to it. He’s been gone a long time. I just…”

Adam sits up. “What?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Adam shrugs. “I wish I had a dad to miss.”

“You had John Winchester. If you hadn’t, neither one of us would be here.”

He used to bristle at that kind of talk, but there’s really no point, now. “I wouldn’t say I _had_ him, exactly.” He tries not to feel that old bitterness welling up, but apparently even decades in a cage hasn't healed that old wound. Surprise. “I used to think it was me, you know? That if I’d been better, he’d have stayed. If I’d been lovable enough, he wouldn’t have gone back to his ‘real’ family. He would have stayed with us.” He waits for Michael to remind him how small he is, but he doesn’t. “I guess kids feel like that. Fucked up wiring, right? That we blame ourselves for shit other people do? Wish your dad had done a better job with that.”

Usually that would at least earn him an angry stare. Michael is still really protective of his absentee father. But Michael just sighs. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

* * *

He’s alone in the house - this perfect facsimile of his own house, before his mother’s death - back when it had felt bright, a little suffocating, a little small, but comforting and safe. 

Before it wasn’t any of those things.

The human brain - is it even his brain anymore? Is it Michael’s? Is just some sort of nebulous other - his soul or essence or whatever? He’ll have to ask the angel. Anyhow, whatever is ‘him’ these days occasionally suffers from very human urges, which is ridiculous. It’s been an eternity since he’s seen a girl, or _anyone_ , really, outside his head. And when he has been out there, in the cage, he’s wanted nothing more than to be back here.

Safe.

But there are still those occasional firings of human needs. The memories of them. He doesn’t really sleep. Or eat. Or have sex. Or homework. He doesn’t have a home or a family. He barely _feels_ human a lot of days. It felt like a lifetime in Purgatory. Waiting.

Michael’s okay company. Snooty. Immortal. And he doesn’t so much lord it over Adam anymore as just… _live_ it. He just literally can’t help it. Apparently being immortal does that. Just makes you immune to things like common decency.

Adam wants to hate him. God, that would be so much easier, wouldn’t it? But Michael is just...a side of a coin that’s fucked wherever it lands. He wants to do good things, he wants to be a good son, and certainly Adam can sympathize with that. But he wants to be a good son by going to war, by destroying his brother, by killing millions of people and by taking Adam’s life and trapping him in this weird _between_ that turns into hellfire when the angel isn’t paying attention. Because living with an angel is painful. Adam only ever sees his face looking back at him, but he knows from those moments where he screamed and cried and begged until Michael remembered him - the angel is much bigger than that. Much more powerful than he’s ever been allowed to see.

* * *

There’s a sound in the house, one he’s never heard before. 

Sometimes Adam hears the door. Michael’s finally stopped just appearing in the house - it seems to have finally occurred to him (or Adam’s said it enough to convince him) that Adam likes some warning, so often he’ll come in the front door and make that slamming sound that used to make Adam’s heart race.

This isn’t the door. It’s some repetitive impact. _Slap, slap_. Pause. _Slap, slap_. Pause. And again. 

“Michael?” Adam calls softly. He follows the noise up stairs he's never seen before, into an attic that never existed, and finds Michael sitting on the floor stripped down to his jeans, his back a bloody messy. His breathing is harsh in the empty space. The blood is dripping sluggishly, enough that it’s hard to see where it’s coming from, and then something flashes up under Michael’s raised arm and lands with a whip-crack that makes Adam recoil. He’s still trying to understand what he’s seeing when it happens again, and the tips of the straps shine in the low light. They’re metal, and they raise fresh blood.

Michael’s breath comes hard but he’s not making sounds, really, just a pause and a stutter as the whip swings around again, under the other arm this time. It hits heavily and leaves new stripes of blood. It lands twice and then pauses again, and Adam knows it will just start again on the other side if he stands there.

“Michael?” he asks uncertainly.

The whip falls to the floor and Michael spins, still on his knees, his head low, his hair damp with sweat and maybe blood.

“Adam, you shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. He steps forward and kneels. “Michael.” He doesn’t know what to say. He’s completely inadequate to...whatever this is. “You...hurt yourself.” He reaches out before he can stop himself, touches one of the lash marks carved there. 

Michael flinches but doesn’t move away. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s to cleanse. It’s penance.”

“What on earth would an angel pay penance for?” he strokes his fingers against the cuts, and he knows Michael could heal them with a thought, knows that he won’t. He just doesn’t know _why_.

Michael sits back, and it brings Adam’s hand in full contact with his torn skin. Michael hisses and Adam holds still, refuses to back away from whatever is happening here. Because, whatever Michael is, Michael is the only thing he’s got, and he needs him to be solid. Real. Sane. He needs to be the strong one because Adam sure as hell isn’t.

“God was… _is_...the Word, and the Truth, and the Way, Adam. I have followed Him from the beginning. His Plan, which I was meant to bring about, His Plan lies undone. And I don’t know for certain why that is, but I know I had my part to play, and I didn’t, and for that, I must suffer. Because God is also discipline and structure, and He is not here. I must do what He cannot. He would punish me for this. I have failed in my final role. The most important moment, and I am here, and not there, where He said I would be.”

Adam shifts, and tries to pull Michael back against him. Screw the blood. “I hear no plan survives the first engagement,” he offers.

Michael a small noise of question, and Adam stifles a laugh. “I was an angsty kid, man. I smoked a lot of pot and read philosophy and shit.”

“I...don’t know that reference.”

“Of course not. It’s practically pop culture. Come here,” he says, and he pulls again until Michael goes limp and lies back in his arms, and then Adam strokes his hair the way his mother used to. Soothing. “Do you, ah...do you do this a lot?”

Michael shrugs and then stiffens with the pain, and it takes a moment for him to relax again. Adam never stops the slow rhythm of his fingers in Michael’s hair.

“Enough to keep myself focused on what is important.”

Adam shakes his head. He’ll never understand Michael. Never. What is _important_? What does Michael think is really important when they’re trapped here _forever_? But he says instead, “I didn’t realize. I never heard you before.”

Michael stiffens again, and it seems like a different kind of pain this time. “I think...I was weak.” His voice is small, now. Much like Adam’s. “I didn’t want to do it alone.”

“You don’t have to. I’m here.” Before he thinks about it, he presses a kiss to Michael’s forehead, and it was supposed to be pure and maybe maternal, but it’s not. It’s electric. It’s intimate.

Adam holds onto Michael so carefully then, tries to still his heart in his chest, tries not to let anything leak through their bond, tries not to let Michael see how important he is, how much this hurts, how much Adam wants to care for him, suddenly. He knows Michael wouldn’t appreciate it. “What do you need?” he asks when he’s sure his voice will be steady. “Can I clean them up for you? Bandage them?”

Michael shrugs but sits up to let Adam go.

He stands up and then turns at the door. “Will you...will you still be here when I get back?”

Michael nods.

Adam gets hot water and mercurochrome and decides there aren’t enough bandages in the world to cover what Michael’s done to himself. He’ll just have to watch him and make sure they’re clean.

He returns and Michael is silent as Adam cleans the wounds, the water turning brown and muddy almost immediately. He smoothes the mercurochrome on with the little applicator and then uses his fingers. He knows he’ll be stained by it, but it doesn’t matter. It will tie them together. It will mark him healer, and that, somehow, feels important. 

He wants to put his lips against Michael’s shoulders, just above where the slashes end, just where the skin becomes smooth again. He wants to whisper things he’d never considered uttering to another person.

He doesn’t.

“All set,” he finally says.

Michael turns slowly and smiles at him. “Am I properly anointed?” 

It feels like he’s making fun of Adam, but his face seems honestly fond.

“Sure?”

Michael takes his hand and turns it, tracing the stains on his fingers where he touched the tincture. “The way you touch me… It makes me feel sacred.”

Adam feels anything but sacred when Michael pulls his hand to his lips and kisses the pad of each finger. 

“Thank you,” Michael says, and then he stands and walks past Adam into the next room. When Adam follows, the angel is nowhere to be seen.

Adam shakes for a long time.

* * *

“You’re sad.”

Michael never _has_ to ask. Sometimes he does. Most of the time, Adam thinks he forgets. Michael wants to pretend that they’re separate. He knows Adam values that, and somewhere along the way, he seems to have decided that the illusion is worth allowing. But it’s just not real. He lives in Adam’s head. He’s seen every memory, every moment. He knows exactly what synapse is firing at any given moment.

“Yes,” Adam agrees, petulant.

“I’m sorry.”

The anger drains like he’s been cut open. There’s no point to it. All they’ve got is each other. Each other and a madman. “I miss my mom. I’m a bug, remember? And a kid, I guess. Still. I just...” He hasn’t felt the touch of another human in...he has no idea. Time is a foreign concept. There’s no sunrise here, no spinning of earth to mark the years, just a slow grind of moments that get lost behind him, and he doesn’t age and he doesn’t change, he just goes a little bit crazy, a little bit lost.

The last time he touched someone, it was Michael, who had felt human and vulnerable in the moment and Adam's trying not to think about that. Not ever. But he does, more or less constantly.

Michael’s beside him suddenly, much closer than he usually is. They’ve never touched before. Not like this. They sit across the room from each other, and they drink Adam’s conception of good whiskey which is probably closer to the crap he and his college buddies used to stow in their closet. It’s the only thing he has to indicate that he’s grown up, now. In a cage with two angels and a chilling silence where there used to be endless screaming.

Adam shivers and Michael strokes his hair, and it’s so reminiscent of _before_ \- of that one time Michael had let Adam care for him, of all those times his mother had comforted him - he nearly chokes on the emotion that wells up in his throat.

“Come here,” Michael tells him, and he does. He curls into the body next to him and closes his eyes and pretends for a moment, a series of moments, that there’s something more to his world than the horror of being trapped for eternity. That this is real. That it’s more emotion than practicality.

* * *

Adam is watching _Chuck_ in the living room and then Michael is sitting near him with a bowl of popcorn.

“Where’d you get that?” Adam asks. They don’t eat. There’s food in the cupboards but Adam opened it once and it was all the same. Like playdough. Colored right, but all a weird consistency, and cooking it was a disaster.

“From your memory. February 18th, 1999, you and your mother sat down and watched Small Soldiers. She came home early and bought microwave popcorn, which you were never allowed to have. It’s one of your favorite memories.”

Adam grabs a few kernels and chews them. They’re fluffy and crunchy and buttery, but they taste a little off. “It’s...what is that?”

Michael shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s your memory. Is it not supposed to taste like this?”

“I don’t think so,” Adam says. He takes another two kernels and chews them carefully. “Huh,” he says.

“Memories are faulty. Building connections using organic material is not really reliable.”

Adam drops his hand to his side. “Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, talk about my brain like a faulty circuit board.”

“Blanket?” Michael asks. The popcorn is gone but the camo pattern fleece that he lost in the woods when he was 12 is over their laps. 

Adam smiles despite himself. “Why not?”

When Michael lifts his arm, Adam curls into him again. Fuck it. Pride hasn’t gotten him anywhere, here. If Michael is offering, Adam is going to take any scrap of human contact he can get.

Michael’s warm, and the rhythm of his thumb against Adam’s arm is soothing enough that he falls asleep, pillowed there, lulled by Tommy Lee Jones’ drawl, trying not to think about what Michael’s skin felt like under his fingers, what it would feel like under different circumstances.

* * *

The urge hits and he always tries to resist, because it’s weird, right? When you never know if your roommate’s going to barge in? He’s always felt a little this way, because even when he was jacking off and his mom was at work or his roommate was in class, he’d always jumped at every single creak and click, sure someone was about to burst through the door. He is literally never going to be able to jack off alone, without fear. Ever. _Fuck_. Of all the sacrifices he’s made - his life, his autonomy, his chance at a serious girlfriend and children and friends and that picket fence he’d sort of decided might be okay - maybe this is the most urgent and undignified. He will never, ever be able to jack off in peace.

He always feels guilty, tucked away in some corner of the house where Michael typically doesn’t show, hiding himself away and then rubbing slowly through his clothes to start, straining to hear any hint that the angel is listening or present, or aware of his furtive efforts in a hopefully forgotten corner.

He finds himself thinking of Michael more or less constantly during such times. Only because it’s necessary. Because Michael is the only person - thing - he knows, and the one most likely to find him doing such shameful things (mating habits, he’d said once, and if that wasn’t a boner killer, Adam didn’t know what was). So it’s often the sound of Michael’s voice (which sounds different in Adam’s ears when it doesn’t come from his throat) that accompanies these hurried sessions, and it’s weird but not completely unexpected when Michael’s voice is what starts to kinda get him in the mood to begin with. Because what else can he imagine, really? Linda Gagnon isn’t really fresh in his memory anymore, and after fifty years or whatever, it's a little creepy to be perving on a college freshman. So he’s moved on. And of the options he's got - Satan, or Michael, or distant memories of girls barely out of puberty - Michael is definitely the least disturbing. 

It definitely has nothing to do with the changes in their dynamic. The way Adam has soothed Michael’s wounds, the way he fits so perfectly into Michael’s side, under his arm, head pillowed on his chest.

“That feels interesting,” Michael observes, and Adam jumps. 

“ _Fuck_ , man. Warn a guy!”

Michael cocks an eyebrow. Adam has nearly forgotten that it’s his own face looking back at him. Michael wears it differently. There are no mirrors in the house, now. Adam took them down and Michael left the modification. It feels a little less...dysphoric that way, letting Michael age and change and become his own person, while Adam still sees himself as 19. It gains him some distance from the man that looks at him, confused and sympathetic, out of a face that could almost be his father’s.

“Show me what you’re doing,” Michael asks, sitting down across from him like he’s going to give a show.

“This is kinda personal,” Adam says pulling at his jeans.

“I want to understand.”

“You’ve been here how long? I’m not going to explain masturbation to you, dude.”

Michael shrugs. “All right.”

There’s a massive sense of dislocation, like the entire world has been pulled out from under him and he’s been shoved into his bedroom, old and fresh with the mirror on the wall, the posters on either side of it - his room, intact and complete from years ago and this isn’t what he lives now, this is memory, fresh as can be. He’s lying on his bed, chair shoved under the doorknob, his cock in his hand and thinking of Amanda, his high school crush. And boy, is he worked up. The way only a teenager can be - breath fast, so close to coming he can practically taste it.

“Hey,” he protests, even though he’s breathless from it, from the memory of it. He can feel it in his bones, in his dick, climbing up his spine, and he shudders and gasps and then wipes himself down with a sock before tucking himself away.

“Not cool!” he tells Michael, who’s smiling softly. “Fuck off, man, haven’t you already done this a bazillion times? Like, with your other bugs?”

Michael shrugs. “It was different with them. They had the reaction but I didn’t...know them. I didn’t know or care what motivated them.”

The memory fades away and they’re back in the hallway, and he’s hard again - still? And trying to keep track of the conversation as reality shifts around him.

“That would be sweet if I didn’t know you only talk to me because you have _literally_ nothing better to do.”

Michael’s smile broadens. “I’m glad, though. You are...more interesting than I’d imagined.”

“Oh, thank you, great one. What a compliment.” He’s waiting for his boner to knock it the fuck off, but it hasn’t gotten the message and he’s trying not to pull at his jeans because Michael is _watching_ him. Every twitch, every shift of his body, and his eyes keep flicking to his jeans curiously as Adam stands as still as he can manage.

“Here, let me.”

Michael’s voice is low. In theory, it’s Adam’s own. But he has never said anything in that tone. Never had cause, never had the confidence for it. This...it makes him shiver. The same way it makes him shiver when he’s alone.

Michael steps closer and Adam tries to step back. “What? No! That’s not…” He can’t finish the sentence when Michael snags his belt loop.

“But you want me to,” Michael says.

“Oh, oh God,” Adam chokes as Michael unzips his pants and takes him in hand, stroking quick and easy like he knows exactly what he’s doing. Adam feels undone in record time, straining and whimpering as he’s touched by someone else for the first time in what feels like an eternity.

He leans into Michael’s shoulder, grabs the jacket that’s the twin of his own and gasps into it, twists his eyes shut as if that will somehow erase the truth of it, but of course it doesn’t. And it doesn’t matter. He comes hard and messy over Michael’s hand, comes down slowly, still holding on like a lifeline.

“Good?” Michael asks. It’s intimate, a bare whisper against his ear.

Adam just nods. It’s got to be wrong, doesn’t it? But it sort of doesn’t matter. If they’ve got eternity, they might as well make it interesting.

* * *

“Say ‘yes,’ to me,” Michael whispers, and Adam knows it doesn’t matter, knows that once is all it takes. But he’s too far gone, now. He’d say it a million more times to get Michael closer. 

“Yes, _yes_ ,” Adam says, and Michael presses in, so slowly it might be years before he’s inside, before Adam is so full he can’t breathe and it doesn’t hurt, exactly, it mostly feels strange, and he thinks they’re probably both just making it up since he certainly doesn’t have any memories to work from. “Michael,” he whines, and he didn’t mean it to sound like that - like begging, like he’s on the edge of some overwhelming need.

“Tell me.”

“ _Yes_ , more, please,” Adam begs, and then Michael moves inside him, and he can’t possibly say anything more. He’s being burnt from the inside, now, but in a wonderful way, like everything is spinning down, pressing in, focusing on one point, tightening down in his abdomen and then building like a furnace, like a bomb.

There’s no way Michael is touching him everywhere he feels it - his legs pulled apart, chest pulled back, throat exposed, chin tipped back, cock and balls choked tight in some incredible great warmth - and then he’s coming apart - feels like his whole body has burst into it’s composite atoms, and then comes sparkling back into shape.

“Oh, jesus-fucking-hell,” he manages at last.

He can feel Michaels lips on his neck, pressing and releasing against one single spot. 

Michael pauses. “Okay?”

Adam nods slowly, hoping everything stays together.

Michael kisses the back of his neck and sighs warm against him. “That was...beautiful. Like creation.”

* * *

The sun is brighter than Adam remembers. The Winchesters are...older. Smaller, somehow.

“I think...I owe you an apology,” Michael tells him when they’re alone.

Adam feels something flutter under his skin, in his stomach. Michael has said he’s sorry, but not like this. Never to _Adam._ “I think you owe me a lot of them,” he quips, trying to hide the way his emotions trip over themselves.

“I probably do,” Michael muses. “When Castiel showed me what I’d become...did you see?”

Adam shrugged. “Some of it.” The glimpses had been terrifying enough. Something wild and cruel and indiscriminate. More a wildfire than anything sentient.

“I think...there isn’t much difference between me and him, you know. Where I ended up in that other place, and where we are, now. Just...you. One human. A few centuries.”

Adam laughs uncomfortably. “You saying I changed your story?” _The bug._ He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t have to. 

Michael looks him in the eye. “Yes. I am.”

“I like this one better. This you,” Adam says, looking over Michael's shoulder.

“So do I,” Michael tells him softly. He reaches out and Adam’s glad to see that hasn’t changed, anyhow. He’d been sure it would. 

“Do you…” Michael’s voice is almost Adam’s, it’s so uncertain. “I wasn’t sure you’d still want this. Now that you have so many options.”

Adam snorts. “Me? I figured you’d be shucking me for a new edition anytime, now.”

Michael chuckles. “No, I like this...edition. You suit me, I think.”

Adam nods slowly. “Yes,” he says, very deliberately. And then he looks away. “I find I’m a creature of habit, to be honest.”

Michael pulls him close and presses lips to his forehead, then slides his slightly stubbled cheek against Adam’s. “Good,” Michael whispers. “Very good.”


	2. ART, Blood tw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Art based on the attic scene.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shealynn88)!


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